COVID-19 and Vaccine News November 28, 2021

Omicron symptoms mild so far, says South African doctor who spotted it

From BBC

Dr. Angelique Coetzee diagnosed patients who later turned out to have the COVID-19 omicron variants. The patients presented differently in that they complained of “feeling so tired with sore muscle and a slight cough.”

“There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected, some are currently being treated at home,” she said.

“What we are seeing clinically in South Africa and remember, I’m at the epicenter, that’s where I’m practicing, is extremely mild,” she said Sunday on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.”

"Round about the 18 November, I all of a sudden encountered unusual symptoms" in a patient who was "extremely tired for the past two days"

Dr Angelique Coetzee explains how she became aware of the Omicron coronavirus variant
https://t.co/RsskjmFkLd #Marr pic.twitter.com/pXtyYsQxxR

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) November 28, 2021

“I think you already have it there in your country,” says the South African doctor who first raised concern over the Omicron variant

Dr Angelique Coetzee says UK doctors “might be more focused on the Delta symptoms” and missing the Omicron varianthttps://t.co/yTOMDgupgq #Marr pic.twitter.com/VmpPGCpxqm

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) November 28, 2021

Omicron Is “Extremely Mild” Says Doctor Who First Discovered Strain As Numerous Mutations “Destabilize” The Virus

From ZeroHedge

Contrary to the panicmongering unleashed by western mainstream median, Barry Schoub, chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines, told Sky News on Sunday that while South Africa, which first identified the new variant, currently has 3,220 people with the coronavirus infection overall and while the variant does appear to be spreading rapidly, there’s been no real uptick in hospitalizations

“The cases that have occurred so far have all been mild cases, mild-to-moderate cases, and that’s a good sign,” said Schoub, adding that it was still early days and nothing was certain yet.

Most importantly, and running counter to the fearmongering narrative being pumped out 24/7 by the mainstream media, Schoub said that the large number of mutations found in the omicron variant appears to destabilize the virus, which might make it less “fit” than the dominant delta strain.

While South Africa, where the Omicron strain first emerged in early November, has been hit with a number of travel bans from the U.K. and other nations, after its scientists found the mutated variant last week, since then a growing number of European countries, along with Australia, have also identified people infected with the variant.

“In a way, hopefully it won’t displace delta because delta we know responds very well to the vaccine,” he said.

At the same time, one could make the point that while Omicron could soon become the dominant strain due to its higher R-nought (or pace of transmission), that could be a blessing in disguise as it pushes out the much more dangerous (and more stable) delta strain.

It wasn’t just Schoub seeking to taper the fearmongering: Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, agreed with Schoub’s assesment calling symptoms associated with the variant at this point “different and so mild” compared with others she’d treated for the virus in recent months.

More at ZeroHedge

It looks like the observations on the field are consistent with what I think.

Should I be afraid of the omicron variant?

Why Isn’t Everyone In Bangladesh Dead From COVID?

From Great Game India

Bangladesh just reported zero COVID deaths in the entire country in a 24-hour period. Charitably, one-quarter of the population is vaccinated. This poor, incredibly densely populated nation appears poised on the verge of achieving herd immunity – despite violating every principle the high priests of the pandemic assure us are necessary to beat COVID.

COVID should be tearing through the slums of Dhaka like wildfire, and the bodies should be stacked like cordwood in the narrow, filthy alleys that separate the shacks jammed with people and the gutters running with filth. A single cough could infect dozens of people already weakened by other diseases, malnourished, and unable to afford medical care.

The “pandemic” will end when sufficient numbers of the people in each nation have had the disease and acquired natural immunity. We cannot vaccinate our way out of this situation. We cannot end the disease by decree.

Bangladesh is perhaps the ultimate proof of the complete bankruptcy of every idea that has been trotted out by the bureaucrats and autocrats of the planet since this entire crisis began. It exposes the complete lack of any factual basis for the belief that we must continue to force vaccinations on the population and punish those who fail to comply.

Perhaps more than anything it highlights the real agendas at work here. People must get vaccinated, because they must be made to comply and because Big Pharma must have its profits. A solution to this manufactured crisis, which preserves personal freedom and rests on natural immunity achieves neither of those goals.

If anything we are being told by the “experts” were true, Dhaka would be a ghost town. It is not. It is moving ahead and out of the pandemic. We are not so lucky.

Postcard From Botswana

by Felicity FitzGerald from The Daily Sceptic

In case a journalist is intending to write another article about the “Botswana variant” please could they note the four reported cases in Botswana were visiting diplomats.

Our population is only two-and-a-half million in a country the size of France so we have plenty of social distancing.

Lumbering Botswana with responsibility for a new, vaccine-evading Covid variant is attention grabbing and thoughtless and will cause a huge increase in poverty and poaching, particularly elephant and rhino.

Failing to do their homework, journalists have prompted many safari tourists who’d booked for Botswana this year and next year to cancel those bookings. Southern Africa and the rest of the world has registered ten cases of this new variant, but by unfairly naming it “The Botswana Variant” journalists have made sure the stigma will remain long after the danger has passed and tourists will unnecessarily avoid the country for the next two seasons. Of course, any new variant should be treated with extreme caution, but the world has suddenly cut Southern Africa off causing a new variant of poverty.

World Medical Association boss compares new strain of COVID-19 with Ebola

From News. am

The chairman of the World Medical Association (WMA), Frank Ulrich Montgomery, believes that a new strain of the omicron coronavirus could become as dangerous as the Ebola virus. He said this in an interview with the Funke media group, RIA Novosti reports.

According to him, there is no exact data on how dangerous this strain is yet, but it is probably spreading very quickly.

More at From News. am

Read this if you have omicron concerns: Should I be afraid of the omicron variant?

Xi as in Xi Jinping. The General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, and President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 2013

WHO Explains Why It Skipped ‘Xi’ When Naming New COVID-19 Variant Omicron

From The Epoch Times

The World Health Organization (WHO) has explained why it skipped the Greek letters “nu” and “xi” in naming the new COVID-19 variant Omicron.

“Two letters were skipped—Nu and Xi—because Nu is too easily confounded with ‘new’ and Xi was not used because it is a common surname and [the] WHO best practices for naming new diseases … suggest avoiding ‘causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, or ethnic groups,’” the United Nations agency said in a statement to The Epoch Times on Saturday.

ONS Slapped Down by UK Statistics Watchdog For Misleading Claim that Unvaccinated Have “32 Times” Risk of Covid Death

From the Daily Sceptic

Ed Humpherson, Director of U.K. Statistics Authority the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), has written to Emma Rourke, Director of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to criticise the agency for a report it put out in October claiming that: “Between January 2nd and September 24th 2021, the age-adjusted risk of deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) was 32 times greater in unvaccinated people than in fully vaccinated individuals.”

The age-adjusted risk of deaths involving #COVID19 was 32 times greater in unvaccinated people than in fully vaccinated individuals between 2 Jan and 24 Sept 2021 https://t.co/P6ZSC2OrxI pic.twitter.com/AMmkw6RpHZ

— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) November 1, 2021

As James Wells, a statistician who served as head of the ONS UK trade team until 2019, pointed out when he wrote to the OSR to complain about the report earlier this month, this statistic uses data from January 2nd to September 24th 2021, which includes the bulk of the winter deaths at a time when almost no one was vaccinated.

This skews the implied vaccine effectiveness, as a fair comparison would only include periods when a significant proportion of the country was vaccinated.

———————————————————————————-

Botswanan Covid Task Force: New Variant Only Found in Vaccinated Individuals

From Armstrong Economics

On November 25, the Botswanan COVID-19 Task Force reported four new cases of the COVID variant B.1.1.529. All four cases were detected in travelers through routine PCR testing. They noted something interesting about all four cases:

“The preliminary report revealed that all four had been fully vaccinated for COVID-19.”

Yes, all four individuals with detectable cases of B.1.1.529 were fully vaccinated. There have been numerous breakthrough cases of COVID-19 and the Delta variant among the vaccinated. Now, it appears that those who have taken the vaccine may be more susceptible to transmission as this new variant is associated with increased antibody resistance.

Goldman Slams Omicron Panic: “This Mutation Is Unlikely To Be More Malicious; No Reason For Portfolio Changes”

From ZeroHedge

One look at the ridiculous plunge across asset markets on Friday, which sent oil into one of its biggest tailspins in history (which as Goldman calculated would only make sense if the Omicron lockdowns are twice as bad as anything observed so far), and one would think that the Omicron variant – which as Edward Snowden so aptly put it “sounds like the name of an 80s movie’s evil Robot King” (of course, the WHO had no choice but to skip the Xi variant, located right before Omicron in the Greek alphabet for obvious propaganda reasons) – is several times more aggressive and far more deadly than the Delta or any other Covid variant to date.

Neither is the case, and in fact, as even Tom Peacock, one of the original Imperial College narrative-setters admitted, “it may turn out to be an odd cluster that is not very transmissable.”

Rules for thee but not for me.

Joe Biden is spotted MASKLESS inside Nantucket store where face coverings are mandated just hours after being ‘fully briefed’ on scary Omicron variant and banning travel from eight countries: Fauci warns super-strain may already be here

From the Daily Mail

The president, who has been staying on the island of Nantucket with family this Thanksgiving weekend, was spotted inside Murray’s Toggery Shop

Biden was seen with his mask around his neck and not covering his mouth

The island brought back its indoor mask mandates earlier this month

Biden, who is vaccinated, has repeatedly told Americans to wear masks indoors

President Joe Biden was caught disobeying an indoor mask mandate this weekend in Nantucket just hours after being ‘fully briefed’ on the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus and banning travel from eight African countries.

Coronavirus Hong Kong: Omicron variant must be kept out of community, experts say; city confirms 3 new cases

From SCMP

Government adviser David Hui says quarantine hotels should step up their efforts to prevent cross infections, but further travel restrictions are not needed yet

However, infectious disease expert Leung Chi-chiu says further flight bans may be necessary, and that the government should discourage travel

Hong Kong’s quarantine hotels must cut off any possible avenues of coronavirus transmission in light of the spread of the new Omicron variant, a local health expert has said, while another has cautioned against unnecessary travel during the coming holiday season.

“Hong Kong’s long hotel quarantine means we probably don’t have such a big problem,” said government pandemic adviser Professor David Hui Shu-cheong, who pointed to an analysis of imported cases by the Department of Health that found 92 per cent were detected by the first week of isolation and 99 per cent by the second.

Australia finds omicron, Israel bans foreign travelers

From AP News

BERLIN (AP) — Australia on Sunday became the latest country to detect the omicron variant of the coronavirus in travelers who arrived from southern Africa, while Israel decided to bar entry to foreign nationals — the toughest of a growing raft of curbs imposed by nations around the world as they scramble to slow its spread.

Confirmed or suspected cases of the new variant have already emerged in several European countries, in Israel and in Hong Kong, just days after it was identified by researchers in South Africa. The “act first, ask questions later” approach reflected growing alarm about the emergence of a potentially more contagious variant nearly two years into a pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, upended lives and disrupted economies across the globe.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR THE B.1.1.529 MUTATED SARS-COV-2 LINEAGE IN SOUTH AFRICA

From the National Institute of Communicable Disease

The Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA, www.ngs-sa.org), which includes the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), KRISP at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), University of Cape Town (UCT), Stellenbosch University (SUN), the University of the Free State (UFS), the University of Pretoria, the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) and the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), has been monitoring changes in SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, since March 2020.

What is the B.1.1.529 lineage?

On 22 November 2021, we detected a group of related SARS-CoV-2 viruses in South Africa named the B.1.1.529 lineage. B.1.1.529 has been detected in Gauteng at relatively high frequency, with >70% of genomes sequenced (n =71) from specimens collected between 14-23 November 2021 belonging to this lineage. This lineage possesses a high number of mutations previously seen in other SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest (VOI) or variants of concern (VOC) but also other mutations which are novel. One of these changes can be detected through standard diagnostic tests that target the S gene, which allows detection of this lineage in South Africa without sequencing data.

How do the C.1.2, Beta or Delta variants differ from the B.1.1.529 lineage?

While the B.1.1.529 lineage shares a few common mutations with the C.1.2, Beta and Delta variants, it also has a number of additional mutations. At the present, the B.1.1.529 lineage is relatively distinct from the C.1.2, Beta and Delta variants and has a different evolutionary pathway.

Does infection with B.1.1.529 result in similar symptoms as with other variants?

Currently no unusual symptoms have been reported following infection with the B.1.1.529 variant and as with other variants some individuals are asymptomatic.

What are the implications? Will these mutations affect vaccine effectiveness, disease severity, and transmissibility?

SARS-CoV-2, like all viruses, changes with time, with mutations that afford the virus some kind of advantage being selected for in recent infections. While some of the mutations in the B.1.1.529 lineage have arisen in other SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern or variants of interest, we are being cautious about the implications, while we gather more data to understand this lineage.

Work is already under way to look at the immune escape potential of B.1.1.529 in the laboratory setting. We are also establishing a real time system to monitor hospitalisation and outcome associated with B.1.1.529. Based on our understanding of the mutations in this lineage, partial immune escape is likely, but it is likely that vaccines will still offer high levels of protection against hospitalisation and death.

More at the National Institute of Communicable Disease

South Africa has the most number of patients identified with the omicron variant so far. The statement below by Angelique Coetzee, the South African Medical Association chairwoman, is the most reliable information about the clinical presentation of omicron.

South African medical association says Omicron variant cause “mild disease.”

From The Times of India

Angelique Coetzee, the chairwoman of the South African Medical Association, told Sputnik on Saturday, the new Omicron variant results in mild disease without prominent syndromes.

“It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well. So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer a loss of taste or smell. They may have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home,” Coetzee said.

The official noted that hospitals have not been overburdened by Omicron patients and that the new strain is not been detected in vaccinated persons. At the same time, the situation might be different for the unvaccinated.

“We will only know this after two weeks. Yes, it is transmissible, but for now, as medical practitioners, we do not know why so much hype is being driven as we are still looking into it. We will only know after two to three weeks as there are some patients admitted and these are young people aged 40 and younger”, Coetzee added.

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